


A Garden You'll Never Get to See

by Philosopher_King



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Air Nomad Genocide (Avatar), Air Nomads (Avatar), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Infant Death, M/M, Miscarriage, Multi, Surrogacy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:02:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26219806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosopher_King/pseuds/Philosopher_King
Summary: "Are your fan clubs—excuse me, Air Acolytes—still mostly female?" Toph asked. " 'Cause you could probably fill the Temples with little airbenders much faster by obliging all the ones who want to have your baby."When Toph first made the joke, Katara was horrified. Twenty years later, with two non-airbending children and after years of miscarriages and heartbreak, Katara starts thinking about it differently.
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar), Aang/Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Aang/Other(s) (Avatar)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 50
Collections: Zutaraang Week





	A Garden You'll Never Get to See

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 1 is being posted for Day 1 of Zutaraang Week 2020, for the prompt "Jealousy"... but this idea has been floating around my head for a while.
> 
> This is consistent with my Zutaraang series [The Three-Body Problem](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1652515) up until the last installment in the current chronology, [The Hypothetico-Deductive Method](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23579722/chapters/56574742). Basically, it's a canon-divergent AU from a series that is canon-compliant except for the unorthodox ship.

It wasn’t often that all the heroes of the Hundred-Year War could gather in the same place at the same time, but they managed it for the fifth anniversary of Zuko’s coronation.

The official celebrations were modest, as these things went. It was a minor anniversary, for one thing… but more importantly, Zuko’s coronation had followed close on the heels of his father’s—and his Nation’s—defeat in the war. Zuko still did not expect his people to celebrate that defeat, though he did not wish them to mourn it, either; the anniversary of the end of the war was a day of solemn reflection and atonement in the Fire Nation. For the previous four years, the anniversary of his coronation had passed unobserved; he considered it in poor taste to celebrate an ascension so closely linked with a defeat that still stung for many of his people. But by the fifth year it was somewhat expected, so he tried to strike a balance between unseemly humility and offensive triumphalism.

The only real benefit of the to-do, as far as Zuko was concerned, was that it provided an occasion to see all of the friends with whom he had fought in the war. It wouldn’t do for them to play a major role in the festivities, of course; Aang spoke briefly in praise of his friend’s work for peace, but for the most part they just stood smiling in the background, a token of the other nations’ good will and approval of Zuko’s reign. No, the people Zuko featured were soldiers who had been brought home from war—wounded soldiers to testify to its horrors, heroes who had saved their comrades but prized peace above glory, soldiers who at the last moment had been spared from dangerous deployments and instead given the opportunity to rebuild either in neglected parts of the Fire Nation (including, Katara was gratified to hear, the Painted Lady’s village of Jang Hui) or in foreign lands that the war had ravaged, where they were forging new bonds of cross-national friendship.

“I thought their speeches went over well,” Sokka opined later as they all relaxed in the courtyard beside the turtle-duck pond. The evening was still warm and a bit sticky, but a breeze was starting to usher in cooler night air.

“Yeah! I think the people are really grateful for what you’ve done, ending the war and bringing the troops home,” Aang agreed, optimistic as ever.

“The people might be. I’m still having some trouble convincing the nobility,” Zuko said. He tossed a handful of seeds and uncooked rice into the pond and watched the turtle-ducks scramble for it, his dark expression softening. Momo watched them avidly, and Aang watched him just as closely to make sure he didn’t start harassing them.

“My offer to take them out still stands,” Katara said sweetly.

“I would be _delighted_ to help,” Toph put in, less sweetly.

“Could we maybe stop joking about casual murder?” Aang said plaintively. At his back, Appa lowed in agreement.

“Thanks for the offer, but I’d rather avoid following in my recent ancestors’ footsteps…” said Zuko.

“At least until another one of them tries to kill you,” Suki said darkly.

“I’d still rather handle it with trials and imprisonment, not summary executions,” Zuko protested.

“We’ll see how long that works,” said Sokka. “How many conspiracies have you had to put down now?”

“Just three. And the last one barely counts! They didn’t even have time to do more than hold a few meetings before we broke them up—thanks to Ty Lee.” Zuko turned to smile warmly at his guardswoman and friend.

Ty Lee smiled back sunnily. “Circus folks make _excellent_ spies.”

“Just saying,” Sokka continued, “if you don’t want to keep swatting down attempted coups every year or two, you might want to think about making more… memorable examples of people.” He exchanged a knowing look with Suki.

“Do we really need to be talking about this right now?” Aang asked, almost pleading, looking increasingly uncomfortable. “Things went well today! Let’s talk about something happier.”

“Thank you, Aang,” said Zuko, directing first a small smile at him, then a glare at Sokka, who put up his hands in surrender, eyes closed and eyebrows raised in a _‘Don’t blame me when you get assassinated’_ kind of expression.

“You’re right, of course,” was Suki’s more gracious response. “How have things been going with the Air Acolytes, Aang?”

He brightened immediately. “They’ve been really great! I’ve taken both of the main chapters to visit Air Temples, and now there’s a smaller chapter in Gaoling, and I’ll be able to show them the Southern Air Temple, where I grew up! I might even be able to fit everyone on Appa this time, so we don’t have to deal with hiring a ship…”

“And climbing that mountain,” Sokka said incredulously.

“Right… I’d need Appa to ferry them up from the ship anyway. I can’t wait for them to see everything! The murals and mosaics, the meditation gardens, the training grounds, the airball courts…” His face fell a little. “But it’s too bad none of them are actually airbenders. There are some beautiful spots you can only get to with a glider, because there’s nowhere for a bison to land. And they can’t really play on the airball court, or play the big horns and chimes built into the mountain; you have to use airbending to make them sound…”

“Well, clearly you and Katara need to get to it,” Sokka said with a smirk. Katara whirled around to glare at him, and even Suki looked a little disapproving.

“Are your fan clubs—excuse me, _Air Acolytes_ —still mostly female?” Toph asked. “ ’Cause you could probably fill the Temples with little airbenders much faster by obliging all the ones who want to have your baby.”

Aang turned bright red, looking horrified. Katara’s jaw dropped. So did Suki’s. _“Toph!”_ Ty Lee scolded her. Sokka chortled. Toph looked smugly pleased with herself.

Zuko looked… thoughtful. “You know,” he said, idly scattering more fingerfuls of grain to the turtle-ducks. “That might not be a terrible idea.”

Suki’s jaw dropped lower; Sokka’s eyebrows shot up. “What do you mean, ‘not a terrible idea’?” Katara demanded.

“I mean… Aang is the only airbender left in the world. If only one woman is bearing his children, that limits the number of children he can have. How many children _are_ you planning to have, Katara?”

“I don’t know,” she said sharply. “A good number. Not too many.”

“We’ve talked about having two or three,” said Aang. Katara frowned at him; he wasn’t supposed to answer, because it wasn’t anyone’s business but theirs—not even Zuko’s, despite the other business he shared with them.

“So at most you could have three airbending children… but realistically, they probably won’t all be airbenders—especially when one parent is a different kind of bender. So maybe you’ll have one or two. And maybe they’ll get married and have a few children, but maybe they won’t want children, or won’t be able to have them. It just… leaves a lot to chance.” He shrugged apologetically and looked down, not meeting either Katara’s eyes or Aang’s.

Katara expected Aang to object, but when she looked over at him for his reaction, she found him looking thoughtful too, and troubled. He said nothing.

“I meant it as a joke, but he does have a point,” said Toph.

“You can’t be serious,” Katara protested.

“I’m torn,” said Sokka. “My rational side says he’s right, but my protective older brother side has a problem with encouraging Aang to cheat on my sister…”

“It wouldn’t be _cheating_ , exactly,” Toph interjected. “If everyone knew about it, and knew what the reason was…”

“You’re talking about asking Aang to sleep with a bunch of Air Acolytes to— to re-seed the Air Nation? That’s not fair to anyone! It’s not fair to them, to—to lead them on like that, and not fair to him, when he doesn’t love them—not _that way_ , anyway—and it’s not fair to the children to make them grow up without a father. And it’s not fair to me, either. And you of all people, Zuko! How could you suggest that? Sharing Aang with people he doesn’t love, who don’t know him like we do?”

Zuko’s eyes were pained when they met hers. “You’re going to have to share _me_ with someone I don’t love, who doesn’t know me like you do,” he pointed out. “Sometimes duty forces you to do things you don’t want to do—duty to your nation, or to the world.”

“But—it’s not the same,” she insisted. “Aang has me. We _will_ have airbending children, and they’ll have their own children. It may take longer, but we’ll rebuild the Air Nation with _love_ , with the love of a family. Not—not _duty_. Not this cold, ‘rational’ calculation.”

“The Air Nomads didn’t really have families in the same way,” Aang said quietly, at last. “I didn’t know my parents very well. I grew up at the Southern Air Temple, with a lot of boys who weren’t related to me, but were like my brothers anyway, raised by monks who weren’t related to any of us. Not all Air Nomad kids grew up that way… but a lot were raised by their mother’s family, with their uncles taking the place of a father. Or by two women, or two men, or a small group of lovers and friends who all parented them equally. It just… wasn’t that important to know who your blood parents were.”

Zuko nodded gravely. “I know. That was part of the propaganda used to justify the slaughter. I read more about it when I was hunting for you, and… it didn’t sound so bad.” His lips quirked into a tiny smile. “I was partly raised by my uncle in place of a father, and I think it turned out better for me. In fact, it would have turned out better for me if I’d never known my father at all… not that I think that would ever be true of your children!” he added hurriedly.

Aang gave him a lopsided smile in return. “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

Katara couldn’t believe what she was hearing—that Aang would side with him, even for a moment. It felt like a slap in the face, a hideous betrayal. “Aang, you can’t possibly be thinking of actually _doing_ this.”

“No, not really,” he said, but he still sounded doubtful; it felt like he was just folding, surrendering to her. She needed to make her point more persuasively, to make sure he _genuinely_ agreed with her, and wasn’t just agreeing to avoid a fight.

“It wouldn’t be like when you grew up,” she said. “There won’t be whole communities of monks and children at the temples. Maybe there’ll be some Air Acolytes—I know you’ve been wanting them to restore and resettle the temples eventually—but they’re all from the Earth Kingdom, and they don’t have the same culture, the same traditions. If you fathered a child with any of them, they’d expect more from you than an Air Nomad woman would have.”

“I know,” said Aang. He was shrinking into himself, which didn’t reassure her that he had been convinced by her argument, but did indicate that it was time to stop hammering the point in.

“It’s not a _good_ plan, necessarily,” Sokka commented. “But if you have three kids and none of them are airbenders… it’s a backup plan.”

“I’d be willing to have a fourth, if it came to that,” she said.

“But it probably won’t,” Suki said soothingly.

“Probably not,” Zuko acceded.

“Alas, the fangirls will have to be disappointed,” said Toph. Katara bent a few drops of pondwater at her face. “Ah, very refreshing!” she said, after a little bit of spluttering.

Zuko came back with Aang and Katara to their room later that night, and Katara tried—successfully—to forget about the matter so they could make the most of their too-rare, too-brief time together. But it came back to her the next morning, when she woke to the sounds of Aang washing up after returning from his morning firebending exercises with Zuko.

She got up to join him in the washroom. “Morning, sleepyhead!” he said brightly. Firebenders and airbenders (or firebending airbenders?) were entirely too cheerful in the morning. She just grumbled at him while splashing water on her face.

By the time they were dressed and ready to go get breakfast with their friends, Katara was fully awake enough to articulate the question that was still bothering her.

Aang was already reaching for the door handle, and she said his name to prompt him to pause and turn back to face her.

“Last night, when we were talking about Toph’s idea to produce more airbenders… you almost seemed to _like_ the idea, to be arguing in favor of it. Do you? Want to… to do that, I mean?”

Aang looked shocked. “Of course not!”

Katara wasn’t entirely reassured yet. “But… what you said about the Air Nomads, how they raised children… it almost felt like I was bullying you into saying you didn’t want to do it. I want to know that you _actually_ don’t want to, not just that you’ll give in if you know _I_ don’t want you to.”

Aang frowned, opened his mouth, paused, sighed, closed his mouth again. After a longer pause, he said, “I know it bothers you, the way some of the Air Acolytes look at me—especially the ones who started out in ‘Avatar Aang Fan Clubs.’ And yeah, the admiration is flattering and all, and maybe I even enjoy all that attention sometimes… but I don’t _want_ any of them. I’m not looking for a— an excuse to sleep with someone who worships me. I don't want that. And I don’t want to give any of them false hopes.”

“But…?”

Aang looked down. “But Zuko is right. We _are_ leaving a lot to chance. There’s no guarantee that any of our children will be airbenders. And… I want to get the chance to see the Air Temples full of airbending children again. Running around on air scooters, playing airball, chasing each other on their gliders… choosing sky bison companions who will be with them their whole lives.”

“Can’t non-bending Air Acolytes have sky bison companions? Can’t all of _our_ children have them, even if they're not airbenders?”

“Yes, of course, but… it won’t be quite the same. An airbender and a sky bison share a soul, the way firebenders and dragons do. They can speak to each other without words, the way the badger-moles spoke to Toph in the language of earth.” Aang gave a sharp sigh of frustration. “So much of Air Nomad culture is founded on bending… there just weren’t any non-bending Air Nomads. It’s wonderful to have the Acolytes, it’s great that they’re so eager to learn about my culture, but… there’s so much that I _can’t_ share with them. Air Nomad culture won’t _truly_ be reborn until there’s a community of airbenders again. And I won’t live to see that.”

“How do you know?” Katara challenged him. “We’ll have grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Avatar Kyoshi lived to be over two hundred years old—maybe you’ll live to see your great-great-great-grandchildren!”

“I’ve already lived one hundred and seventeen years,” Aang said. “And I don’t even have children yet.”

“One hundred of those years don’t really count…”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“Why, do you feel like a hundred-year-old man?” Katara teased him.

Aang didn’t smile back. “Sometimes,” he said seriously.

Katara’s smile faded. “You mean… physically? Or just because everything is so different from the way you knew it?”

Aang sighed again, deeply. “Sometimes I feel very, very tired.”

Katara put a hand on his shoulder. “We all do. We were all thrown into war and leadership much too young.”

Aang shook his head, his gray eyes clouded and distant. “No, it’s not just that. It’s… more than that. Older, and deeper.”

“Well, you have been trying to keep the world in balance for hundreds of lifetimes.”

Aang hummed in thoughtful acknowledgment. “Maybe that’s all it is.”

“‘Maybe that’s _all’?_ That’s quite a lot!”

Aang finally smiled, reluctantly. “True.”

“You’ll see our grandchildren, Aang. You’ll teach them how to fly on a glider and watch them choose sky bison calves. And they’ll be _ours_ — _our_ children and grandchildren. Not just children you happened to sire, but didn’t raise.”

“I _would_ help raise them,” Aang pointed out. “I’d be the only one who could teach them airbending.”

“You’d be their teacher, but not really their _father_. And what would their relationship with _our_ children be like? Would you teach them together? How would your other children feel, knowing that they’re the ones you sired out of duty, not the ones you raised with someone you love? It would be like… the Earth King or the Fire Lord’s children with his queen and his children from his concubines. Only… sort of in reverse.”

“I know. You’re right; it wouldn’t be fair to the mothers, and it wouldn’t be fair to the children.” He paused. “But I would love them all,” he said quietly.

“You’re saying… you _wouldn’t_ love our children more?” Katara knew she was being unreasonable, but she couldn’t help it.

“Of course I would,” he said, but the shadow of doubt over his faint smile made her suspect that, once again, he didn’t fully believe what he was saying, and was just surrendering to her, telling her what she wanted to hear to avoid conflict. She loved Aang fiercely, overwhelmingly, but she hated it when he did that—and she knew that if she tried to call him on it, she would just feel even more like a bully than she already did every time he did it. Aang might have attained competence in bending earth and fire, but Katara thought that Toph and Zuko could still give him a few more lessons in standing his ground and facing conflict head-on.

“You’re right,” Aang said again, with a little more conviction. “There are a lot of reasons why it’s a crazy idea. Zuko probably didn’t think it all the way through.”

“‘Zuko probably didn’t think it all the way through’… and platypus-bears probably shit in the woods,” she said slyly.

“You said it, not me,” said Aang, now with a genuine smile, and they went to join the others.

At breakfast and for the rest of their visit to the Fire Nation, no one said anything about Toph’s ‘joke’ or Zuko’s musings on it; as far as Katara could tell, everyone (except for her and Aang) had forgotten all about it. If they had, she certainly wasn’t going to be the one to mention it again, and she soon forgot about it, too.

But she still remembered it sometimes, occasionally, when she and Aang were married and trying for their first child. She remembered it when she was pregnant with Bumi and then with Kya, feeling the child move and kick inside her, wondering if there was any way she could know that the child would be an airbender. She remembered it when she saw Aang watching Bumi anxiously for any signs of airbending ability—unusually powerful sneezes, or an incident when he fell and caught himself with a gust of air before he hit the ground. She remembered it whenever Aang said, consoling himself as much as her, that some kids didn’t have their first airbending episode until they were as old as six.

She remembered it especially often during the heartbreaking year when Bumi turned seven without showing an ability to bend either air or water—all but extinguishing Aang’s hopes that his first son would inherit the full riches of Air Nomad culture—and when four-year-old Kya, resisting bath time as four-year-olds often do, made a little tsunami in the tub trying to bend the water away from her. Katara should have been overjoyed (well, not at the bath-resistance part), but the revelation that her daughter was a waterbender like her mother was inextricably tied up with the knowledge that she _wasn’t_ an airbender like her father. Of course Aang expressed his pride and delight when Katara brought a reluctantly clean Kya to tell him… but she also heard him weeping softly on his side of the bed when he thought Katara was already asleep.

Aang and Katara had started trying for a third child as soon as Kya was a year old—before they had any way of knowing what kind of bender she would be, if any, and when their hopes for four-year-old Bumi were already starting to dwindle.

Katara miscarried for the first time when Kya was two; with her healer’s training, and her attunement to the blood and water in her own body, she could feel her womb beginning to flush itself clean even before the terrible cramps started, worse than any that had ever accompanied her moon’s blood. She had barely been pregnant for three months; they had told no one but her family and their closest friends.

The Fire Lord and Lady paid a semi-official visit to the Avatar and his wife in Republic City, on some flimsy pretext involving the anniversary of an important landmark in its founding. Privately, Mai—with whom Katara had never been very close (though of course she knew of and assented to Katara and Aang’s relationship with Zuko)—told her that she had had two miscarriages before Izumi was born. She didn’t need to say _“I understand your grief”_ or _“Don’t lose hope”;_ Katara could fill in the rest on her own. Mai sat silently with her hand on Katara’s while she sobbed; eventually she put her arms around her husband’s lover and stayed until her tears ran out. Zuko spent that night with Aang and Katara, as he seldom did when they were in the same place as Mai, though they did little more than kiss and hold one another.

Katara became pregnant again not long after. She did not make a public announcement until four months in. Her pregnancy seemed to be proceeding as smoothly as it had with Bumi and Kya (which is to say, not _pleasantly_ , but not with any disasters, either) until the seventh month, when the baby’s movements, the presence of a life within hers, seemed to weaken. Amihan—Yugoda’s most talented student, who had become the Master Healer at the North Pole when her old teacher had died—was summoned by messenger hawk and sailed to Air Temple Island, but she could not provide the certainty Katara needed to assuage her fears. She was still present when Katara went into labor, almost two months early.

“I’ve brought babies into the world as early as this who have grown up hale and hearty,” Amihan assured her. Aang reminded her, “Iroh told us that Zuko was born more than a month early, and he turned out fine… well, physically healthy, anyway.”

But Katara’s baby was born weak, barely clinging to life. There was no Spirit Oasis here to bring the baby to, no Moon Spirit to grant him a portion of its life. The baby, named Gyatso (as they had planned if the child was a boy), died five hours after he was born. Aang and Katara left Bumi and Kya in Sokka and Suki’s care while they flew with their third (or perhaps fourth) child to the Southern Air Temple and left his tiny body on one of the highest peaks for the mountain birds to return his substance to the sky, as they had done for the first Gyatso.

This time, because the world knew about the pregnancy, they had to mourn in public. Katara accepted sympathies from everyone from the Earth King and Chief Arnook of the Northern Water Tribe to United Republic councilmembers to ordinary Republic City citizens who recognized her on the street. Iroh put a ‘Temporarily Closed’ sign in the window of the Jasmine Dragon and traveled from Ba Sing Se. He stayed for a month to help Aang and Katara with household tasks and the care of their living children, alongside Sokka, Suki, and Toph (now with a toddler of her own), who had been taking turns making them meals and babysitting. Fire Lord Zuko and Chief Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe couldn’t stay long—they never could—but they both came for a few days, leaving their respective nations in the care of their wives and advisors, to grieve with Katara and Aang and render what assistance they could.

Gyatso died later in the same year that Bumi turned seven and Kya first showed the ability to waterbend.

Aang and Katara didn’t try again right away, but they did try again. Katara was thirty-seven already—nowhere near the oldest that she had seen and even helped mothers give birth, but old enough to be thinking ahead to the end of her fertile years.

She miscarried twice more. The memory of Toph’s ‘joke’ was ever more present in her mind as the Air Acolytes’ numbers grew—enough to maintain a consistent presence first at the Western Air Temple, then the Eastern as well—and the size of her family remained stubbornly the same.

Katara was forty, Aang was thirty-eight, Bumi was ten, and Kya was seven when Katara made a hard decision.

They had tucked their children into bed, and Aang had told Kya one last story about his childhood adventures traveling the world before she was satisfied and agreed to close her eyes and try to sleep. Aang joined Katara in their bedroom and found her sitting on the edge of the bed rather than already in it.

He must have perceived the tense anxiety in her face and posture. “Katara, sweetie? What is it?” he asked, brows furrowed in concern.

“Aang… do you remember the fifth anniversary of Zuko’s coronation?”

“Vaguely,” he said, his worried frown turning puzzled.

“Do you remember when we were all sitting by the turtle-duck pond, and Suki asked you about the Air Acolytes, and Toph made a joke? That you could fill the Air Temples with airbenders again if you obliged all the female Acolytes who wanted to have your baby?”

Aang's face was growing increasingly apprehensive as she spoke. “I remember the joke, yes.”

“But Zuko took it seriously. He thought it might actually be a good idea.”

“But we decided it didn't make sense,” Aang cut in. “I didn’t want to lead the women on, or create a group of children who would always feel lesser than ours.”

“I know. And those reasons seemed compelling then. But now… it’s been seven years since I gave birth to a living child. Neither of our children are airbenders. I can’t let your people’s legacy die with you, Aang.”

“What are you saying?” Aang asked, disbelieving. He sat down heavily on the bed beside her.

“I want you to do it. I want you to sleep with any women who are willing to try to bring a new generation of airbenders into the world. As many as are necessary.”

“But…” Aang struggled to make sense of what he was hearing and respond with reason. “But the Acolytes—I don’t want to show special favor to anyone, to sow jealousy within the community.”

“Then sleep with all of them who are willing. The more, the better. Not all of their children will be airbenders, after all; many will be non-benders, some might even be earthbenders or firebenders. Send out a call beyond the Air Acolytes if you have to; offer some reward to any women in the United Republic who volunteer…”

“We can’t pay them, Katara,” Aang said, alarmed. “I don’t want desperately poor women ‘volunteering’ to bear my children because they have no other choice.”

“Not a monetary reward, then. Something else.”

“We need to talk to Zuko,” Aang said abruptly.

“Of course. It was his idea; he might be able to help us figure things out. And… you’re his, too.”

Aang just nodded. He was looking somewhat lost.

“We’ll be all right,” said Katara.

Aang nodded again and put his arms around her, resting his cheek on her hair.

They sent a messenger hawk to the Fire Lord’s palace indicating that the Avatar and his wife needed urgently to meet with the Fire Lord, but they didn’t detail why. They received a reply three days later with a date when the Fire Lord could accommodate them, in two weeks’ time.

When the date came, they left Bumi and Kya with their Uncle Sokka and Aunt Suki and flew to the Caldera. They landed in Appa’s usual courtyard near the stables and were ushered into the Fire Lord’s presence by guards and attendants—not in the throne room, which would have been too distant and formal, but in a smaller meeting room in the same wing of the palace. Zuko was not there yet, but a freshly brewed pot of tea was waiting for them. A servant who had been standing quietly in a corner poured some into two cups set in front of them.

They had only been waiting for a minute or two when Zuko rushed breathlessly into the room. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’ve been renegotiating fishing treaties with the Earth Kingdom and the Northern Water Tribe…”

“It’s all right,” Aang said with a patient smile. “We know how busy you are. Thank you so much for making the time to talk to us.”

“Of course!” The quiet servant poured some tea into a cup at Zuko’s place. “Thank you, Nari,” he said. “You may go.” She bowed with perfect decorum and (impressively) walked backwards out the door.

“So, what’s the matter?” Zuko asked, restlessly spinning his cup in his hands as he did when he was anxious. “Your message was so cryptic, it’s gotten me worried.”

Katara exchanged a look with Aang. With a slight tilt of his head he designated her as their spokesperson… which made sense, because Zuko needed to know that despite the resistance, even horror, she had initially expressed at the idea, she had come around to it now.

“You know that Aang and I have only two children, neither of whom is an airbender. And that we have had… difficulties in the years since Kya was born.”

Zuko nodded gravely. His friends’ losses were his as well—the loss of children he might have watched grow up and done his small part to raise, as he did with Bumi and Kya, and as Aang and Katara did with Izumi.

“Do you remember a conversation we had years ago—twenty years ago, now—about repopulating the Air Nomads? It started with a joke about all the Air Acolytes who wanted to have Aang’s baby…”

Zuko had been frowning in confusion, fruitlessly searching his memory, until Katara mentioned the joke; then recollection dawned on his face. “It was Toph’s joke. And I was the only one who considered it as a serious suggestion.”

“You were at the time… but you’re not the only one anymore.”

Zuko looked from Katara to Aang and back again with a stunned expression. “You’re really… considering it now? Both of you?”

“Katara was the one who brought it up,” said Aang; he still sounded surprised to be saying it. “But we needed to ask you, too. If you’re all right with it.”

“If I’m…” Zuko seemed to be struggling to wade through a torrent of thoughts and feelings and channel some of them into words. “What right would _I_ have to object to anything you need to do to revive your nation? _I_ , as Sozin’s descendant and the ruler of the nation who destroyed them… You’re asking if I would be _jealous?_ Who cares about _my_ personal jealousy? I would pay any price to undo what Sozin did. If I could change history so that Roku killed him before my grandfather was born, I would do it; if I could, I would go back in time and kill him myself. I would cut my own throat if my blood would bring the Air Nomads back to life. And you ask whether I’m _all right_ with… what, letting you sleep with a few Air Acolytes? As if it were my place to _let_ you…”

Somewhere amid that flood, Aang stood up and walked around the table to kneel beside Zuko and put his arms around him. “Shhh, Zuko,” he said, gently pulling his friend’s head onto his shoulder. Zuko took a deep, ragged breath in through his nose and let it out slowly, twice, three times (Katara worried at first that he might set the collar of Aang’s robe on fire, but his control had improved with age).

“I’m going to take that as a ‘yes,’” Aang said with gentle amusement.

Zuko laughed shakily into Aang’s chest. “Yes, of course. And if there’s anything I can do to help…” He cleared his throat, pulled away from Aang’s hold to sit up straight, and smoothed his robes and hair back into perfect neatness.

“We were wondering about that, actually,” said Katara.

“I’ve been worried about how it would play out within the Air Acolytes… whether it would create some sort of hierarchy between those who are willing, or able, to bear airbending children and those who are not. We were thinking it might help if the… opportunity were extended beyond the Air Acolytes, so they wouldn’t get the idea it was tied to… level of devotion, or holiness, or something.”

“ _And_ so that each volunteer would only bear _one_ child, regardless of whether it turned out to be an airbender or not,” Katara added. “But we weren’t sure how to… present the opportunity. Aang objected—quite rightly—to the idea of _paying_ women to bear his children. Maybe some would volunteer just because they want a child but don’t want to get married—”

“Like Toph,” Aang put in.

“But not everyone is as indifferent to scandal as Toph,” Zuko said dryly.

“Right. But that might not be enough,” said Katara. “Can you think of a good way to… to make the option seem attractive, without the possibility that we’ll end up exploiting anyone’s desperation?”

“Honor,” Zuko said immediately.

Aang exhaled a little laugh through his nose. “Very funny.”

“No, I’m completely serious. Offer a— a medal or something, for extraordinary service to the United Republic of Nations. I could offer an honorary title of nobility to any citizen of the Fire Nation who volunteers—nothing material, no lands or income or concrete power; purely symbolic, but meaningful nonetheless.”

“That might work better in the Fire Nation than in the United Republic…” Katara remarked.

“Maybe,” Zuko acknowledged. “But there _is_ some kind of… ceremonial honor in the United Republic, isn’t there? For civilians, I mean.”

“Yes. The Council has awarded the Medal of Peace to a few people who helped make the United Republic a reality. Mayor Morishita of Yu Dao and his wife Jian Shi, who was part of the first coalition government in the former colonies. Lao Beifong, who co-founded one of the first joint ventures in Cranefish Town. Satoru, the engineer who invented the internal combustion engine and helped save the town from General Old Iron… We offered it to Toph, but she, uh, declined.”

“Not politely,” Katara added.

“She was right that it might have looked… self-congratulatory, on the part of the Council, but she didn’t have to be quite so… profane about it?”

Zuko put a hand up. “As much as I would love to hear the rest of that story, the important point is that you _do_ have an honor you can confer on civilians who render service to the United Republic. So, offer this Medal of Peace to anyone who volunteers to bear a child who might be an airbender.”

“Of course!” Aang looked both delighted and relieved. “Why didn’t we think of that…?”

Zuko was frowning thoughtfully again. “What will happen to these children, if they turn out to be airbenders?”

“What do you mean, what will happen to them?” Aang asked.

“I mean… will you take them away from their mothers, to be raised at an Air Temple, as you were?”

“I had no thought of _taking them away_ ,” Katara said sharply—not when she knew what it was to be a mother, and to lose a child. “Air Temple Island would be like—a school. Children from the United Republic could go home to their families every day, if they wanted to; children from the Fire Nation could stay in our dormitories during the school year and go home for holidays.”

Zuko nodded. “That makes sense. Boarding schools are very common in the Fire Nation—and prestigious! What mother wouldn’t boast that her child attends the Avatar’s Airbending Academy…?”

Aang’s face broke into a broad, genuine smile, and he even laughed aloud. “Thank you, Zuko.”

“Anything I can do to help you, I will. _Anything_.”

“This is much better than… than ‘cutting your throat,’ or going back in time to kill your own great-grandfather.” He paused, frowning. “Would that even be possible? Because if you succeeded, you wouldn’t exist to do it in the first place…”

Zuko hummed, brow furrowed. “I think it depends on how you think about time…”

“Boys,” Katara interrupted. “Maybe you should continue this discussion when we’re _not_ taking up the Fire Lord’s valuable governing time…?”

“Right, of course,” said Zuko, looking a little sheepish. He stood, and so did his guests. “I’ll see you this evening, then?”

He did spend the evening with them (the subject of time travel did _not_ come up again, to Katara’s relief), and also the night, though Mai was also in the palace. Katara and Zuko both lavished their attention on Aang, leaving their marks on him where no one else would ever see; they pinned him between them, by turns taking or being taken by him. They wanted to leave him speechless, breathless, helpless with pleasure—and to leave no doubt as to whom he belonged to. As the Avatar and the last airbender, he also belonged to the world, and to the once and future Air Nation, and Katara and Zuko were gracious enough to share him… but he was still and always theirs above all.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from _Hamilton_ , as I'm sure most people don't need me to tell them.
> 
> The estimated chapter count is kind of a wild guess and subject to revision. The point is just that there will be a few more chapters, but not that many.


End file.
